Saturday, January 14, 2012

Sandwich shop

Sorry to mislead you, but this post isn't a review of some great lunch restaurant (although, that would be fun to do sometime). It's about how I spent my morning. My husband is a finish carpenter - he installs all the trim, doors, mantles, and railings in new homes and other construction. He does a lot of custom work as well, such as building cabinetry or other types of built-in furniture, like entertainment units. To do this, he needs a shop space. Our home is a modest size townhome with a single garage and not very conducive to the kind of work he does, so he rents a shop in an industrial building in town.

In his shop, he has built a large table for assembling various things on and for whatever else he might choose to use it for. The table is 4' x 8' and the legs are fairly tall. The top is smooth and the edges are all finished and sanded. It is the perfect place for me to make a quilt sandwich! Even better, he has a crate full of clamps which I use to secure the various layers to the table. The shop is dusty, but not dirty. It only takes a quick minute to clean the table to the point where I'm not worried about putting my precious quilt top on it.

I really am thankful to have a space like this to go to. We have laminate floors through most of our home and the safety pins I use to baste my quilt would make a scratched up mess of the finish in short order. Ditto with something like a dining room table. I used to bring my big cutting mat to the table but it was still a challenge to secure the layers nice and flat. These clamps are awesome (I told him he can buy more of those any time he wants!) and hold everything very securely. I just dump out my pins and get to it. The fact that the table is fairly tall is great for me because I have a bit of height as well.

I was able to spend time this afternoon quilting this one. I really struggled with my machines (yes, read plural) but it is finished and with each project, my machine quilting improves a little. I do like to send the big quilts out to the longarm machine quilter, but this one was fairly manageable. I'll hopefully have pictures soon.